Spaceship Built For Two
by Kiba Sniper
Summary: Staying up until 3:00 a.m. is not the ideal work environment for Chloe, but she makes do. After all, she has a spaceship to design. Chloe/Bobby


Spaceship Built For Two

Chloe yawned and willed herself to stay awake. She was hunched over at her desk in her apartment, squinting at her blueprints and scrutinizing every detail. The design needed to be perfect. While in the perspective of another it would seem that way, she noticed crucial flaws which jeopardized the entire project.

Particularly, she had trouble with the engine. It would be the first of its kind fully fueled by psitanium. No other spaceship had been entirely powered by it. She was more than delighted to have been selected among several applicants to design the first of what she hoped were many, but she faced a conundrum. Although much more information was available on psitanium, the risks were obvious. It was still unknown if a ship could be powered by it. Additionally, if the agents were surrounded by so much burning psitanium during launch, they risked being incapacitated with a psychic high so powerful their minds might have exploded.

But the Psychonauts still wanted her to design one. She needed an alpha model by the end of the week. She found herself gnawing on her lip and scratching through her scalp as she considered the exact kind of metals and alloys needed for the engine. Steel sounded the most logical, but with the psitanium burning within it, she was not sure if the engine would tear itself apart or implode before the agents did.

Even though she had a week to consider all of these scenarios and options, she burned the midnight oil. The opportunity was once in a lifetime. She had fantasized and worked towards designing her own spaceship as a child, but now that was in her grasp, she put everything she had into it. Sleep was secondary compared to making the spaceship, and even though she noticed the time on her smartphone was well after 3:00 a.m., she went back to work.

Chloe tapped her ballpoint pen onto the blueprints. They were spread out on her desk, taking up every inch of space. To the untrained age, it looked like a bunch of scribbles and insane doodles, but they were all alpha versions. Each of them were unique with varying wing spans and amenities. Some of them appeared similar with only slight differences in the shuttle's curvature or mere centimeters for the size of the landing gear, but none of them seemed right. She found flaws in every one of them. Notes in the margins criticized the amount of people one could hold while another had a plethora of question marks around its' engine, which she added more to when she realized that ship could not possibly be big enough to hold enough psitanium to power the entire trip.

Groaning, Chloe hunched forward, her back aching from her poor posture. She rolled her shoulders back and sighed as if that breath could ease her pain. Leaning back in her chair, she heard distant car alarms and music from somewhere in the city, the nightlife sounding like whispers carried by the wind. She listened for a moment to the outside world, the kickback and drums in a muffled rap song from a speeding car with its engine revving reminding her of Quentin and Phoebe's latest hit.

Yawning, she pinched her brow to resist the temptation of falling asleep. She still had so much work to do. She did not want to waste precious time with her body slowing her down. Sleep was something she had fought for most of her life. She knew better than to waste time dreaming about accomplishments she wanted finished, even if it had caused some tedious arguments between Bobby and her about their equally poor sleeping habits.

She used the late night because Bobby was on a mission. He couldn't worry about her if he was halfway around the world in Thailand. Since he was working with Raz to take down a psychic gambling ring, Chloe knew Bobby would be occupied with thoughts of besting him to make himself look good in their mutually juvenile rivalry. It made her roll her eyes, but it added to his charm.

Glancing over her shoulder, Chloe surveyed her shared apartment as if Bobby would materialize out of thin air. She scanned the living room, finding the same hardwood floor and white walls pinned with blueprints, star maps, and old photographs. She twisted her head over her other shoulder, catching sight of her reflection in the television on another table, the vacuum leaning next to it, some of her work bags left on another nearby chair.

Looking at her socked feet, she found the blue, plush cat bed without a cat in it and frowned. Leatherface was either sleeping on their bed or was off terrorizing some poor people outside. The old, wrinkly Sphynx could not be trusted by himself, but Chloe was not in the mood to search for him. He would probably return through the cat door, and if not, she was certain to hear from a very annoyed landlord tomorrow morning.

Yawning again, Chloe shook her head and refocused. She idly twisted her fingers around the material of Bobby's shirt, the hem reaching down to her thighs. Although she was taller, it was still large on her. She tucked her thumb around the collar and pressed it to her cheek, the worn cotton comforting as she breathed in the faint, lingering scent of his spray-on coconut cologne, her worries beginning to fade.

But as soon as she turned her attention back to her work, she sighed. She dug her palm to her forehead and groaned. The monotonous hum droned on, fueled by an onslaught of beeping horns from outside and rumbling thunder echoing farther in the distance, the smell of fresh rain wafting in through the open window.

She blinked long and slow as she took in her blueprints. Pencil marks shaded into one another. English became hieroglyphics. The many question marks hooked and looped together. She leaned forward, her elbow slowly slipping on her blueprints, and her head lowered, her eyelids heavy as the rain pelted the asphalt below.

But she never met the table. She felt bandages pressing against her cheek, coarse, calloused fingers gently cupping her face. Another hand steadied her shoulder and slowly pulled her up. Blinking again, Chloe noticed the sky blue color of those hands, then the faint pink scars running up the arms until she found herself staring into his hetero-chromatic red and green eyes wide with concern.

"Bobby," she said, sounding out his name. Her pencil fell between the spaces of her fingers and bounced off the table, rolling out of sight.

"Man, I get back early and see you looking like you're about to pass out wasted," he said, his humor masking his worry. He glanced at her blueprints, noticing quite a few spelling mistakes. The question marks made his mouth quirk into a grin as Chloe heaved out a sigh.

"I just got so in to designing them," she admitted, straightening her back. She felt something soft brush against her ankles and flinched, her eyes shooting open. She pulled her legs to the side, the sight of a flicking tail catching her off-guard.

"Relax, relax. It's just Leatherface," Bobby said, pointing at the cat bed. When she followed his finger and found the old, wrinkly cat kneading his bed before nestling down, he added, "I found him wandering outside when I came back and knew what was goin' on."

Guilt pricked at her skin. She knew Leatherface also needed sleep, but she continued working anyway. It made sense why he ran off. If he had not immediately settled down in his bed, he probably would have bitten her ankles as punishment for interrupting his slumber.

Though, that made another question pop in her head. She furrowed her brows and slowly looked back up at Bobby. Tilting her head, she asked, "How long have you been here?"

He shrugged. "Uh, about forty-five minutes."

Her eyes bulged in her skull as she sputtered, "Wha-? Forty-five minutes? How did I miss you?"

"Well, y'see, I teleported in. Guess you didn't hear me." He scratched his neck. "I went to that convenience store down the street after about fifteen minutes of waiting." He cocked his head over to her work bags. She found leftover plastic bags from what she believed was a quick grocery run. "When I came back, you were scribbling all over a design. Ya seemed pretty invested, so I kept quiet and let ya work 'til you were about to hit the desk."

"But I just looked over my shoulder."

"Yeah. I turned invisible as soon as you turned around to see how long you'd keep going." He snickered as she frowned. "Mean, I know, but you're the one breakin' our 'we gotta stop having fucked up sleeping schedules' promise."

Her cheeks flushed with pink, darkening further when Bobby cackled. She wished she had her helmet on so she could hide her face. She went to retort only to yawn, her sleep-addled brain desperate for rest. Dropping her head, she pushed her blueprints to the side and said, "Bobby."

He straightened, attentive of her weariness. "Yeah?"

She slowly looked up at him, letting him see the faintest hints of purple rings under her eyes. "I think if I don't fall asleep in the next five minutes, I will die."

Bobby howled with laughter as she pressed her face against his stomach, his shoulders shaking. He picked her up, letting her limbs dangle against him. PSI poking the light switches, he turned them off. He cupped the back of her head, tracing circles on her scalp with his thumb as she slung her arms around his neck, burying her face against his shoulder, letting him hold her tight while he shuffled over to their bed in the next room. Keeping her eyes closed, she listened to him lift the blankets and settle inside, the bed-springs creaking underneath them, the immediate warmth of their bed delightfully comforting to Chloe as she uttered a deep sigh, her body slackening on top of his.

"Oh, how was your mission?" she asked, her voice muffled by his chest.

"I'll tell ya all about it tomorrow, I promise," he said, wrapping one arm around the small of her back. He kissed the crown of her head, Chloe's grip on his shirt loosening as she nestled closer to him.

She kept her ear pressed against him and listened to his heartbeat. It was slow and hypnotic, lulling her off to sleep like the rain outside. She felt the rise and fall of his chest, a comforting sensation, one she appreciated every evening when he was with her. As Bobby kissed her head again, Chloe fell asleep and dreamed of galaxies and nebulas with him by her side in their spaceship built for two.


End file.
